Indian American to Head Research for One of Costliest Diseases in WestHealthy Living

An Indian American researcher and his team have received a grant for studying thrombosis, which is a life-threatening condition of blood clots being formed in the arteries and veins.

Sriram Krishnaswamy, a researcher at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of Paediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, will be leading the team for the study, according to a report.

The team will receive the five-year grant for the project "Hemostasis and Thrombosis: Chemistry, Biology, and Physiology" from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under the United States Department of Health.

Krishnaswamy and his team will be looking at the mechanisms of clotting to comprehend how to modulate it in a better way and find new approaches to the treatment of human diseases.

Krishnaswamy, who grew up in India, moved to England after completing his early education at Lawrence School, Lovedale, Tamil Nadu.

Following his graduation from Denstone College Staffordshire, he came to the U.S. for graduate studies in biology and biochemistry at Syracuse University, New York. After that, he joined the University of Vermont for his post-doctoral fellowship.

"This is one of the most concerted group efforts, perhaps in the world but certainly in the U.S., where there are so many investigators working together on mechanistic aspects of coagulation," Krishnaswamy said.

"The problem with too much clotting is by far one of the most staggering medical issues in the Western world. It's the largest cost - related to hospitalization and loss of life - of any disease out there."

Though thrombosis is extensively understood to be an old man's disease, it is limited to that segment of the population.